The Scariest Night

by Betty R. Wright

  “We will try to talk to Cousin Caroline,” Molly Panca said softly. “I can’t promise she’ll speak, but we’ll try. Please be very quiet, everyone.… Cousin Caroline, are you with us?”

  The Brown sisters stopped scowling at each other, and Mr. Barnhart nodded proudly. “Molly will bring ’er in,” he whispered to Erin. “You just wait.”

  “Let us know if you are with us, Cousin Caroline,” Molly pleaded. “Mrs. Grady longs to hear from you.”

  The answer made them all gasp. “I am here.” A woman’s voice spoke clearly from the bedroom. “What is it you want?”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Grady stared with narrowed eyes into the darkness of the bedroom. “I don’t see her,” she said. “Where is she?”

  Cora Brown gave a little whimper. “Oh, don’t make us see her,” she begged. “I don’t want to see a ghost.”

  “I am here,” the voice repeated. “What do you wish to know?”

  Mrs. Grady patted her forehead with a large plaid handkerchief. “Well, if that’s really you, Caroline,” she said, sounding nervous for the first time, “I want to know what to do about that daughter of yours. You asked me to keep an eye on her when she came to Milwaukee to work, but I never dreamed you were going to up and die. And I didn’t know she was going to get engaged. Caroline, he’s a terrible man. He treats her badly. And he has dirty fingernails. What should I do?”

  They had all turned in their chairs to peer into the dark bedroom—all except Molly who still had her eyes closed and a peaceful expression on her white face.

  “What would you do if you were here, Caroline?” Mrs. Grady was beginning to sound more like her impatient self. “Don’t just hide there in the dark—speak up.”

  Erin could hardly believe her ears. Mrs. Grady was scolding a spirit! Just the way she probably scolds Cousin Caroline’s poor daughter, she thought.

  “If I could talk to her,” said the voice in the bedroom, “I’d tell her I love her.”

  “Love her!” Mrs. Grady was highly annoyed. “What’s that got to do with anything? I asked you what to do about her wretched boyfriend.”

  “She’s so lonely in the city,” the voice said. “She needs somebody. She may not be thinking very clearly right now, but it would help if she knew you cared.”

  “Well, of course I care,” Mrs. Grady snapped. “But I don’t see—”

  “Tell her you love her,” the voice repeated, fainter now. “Tell her, and see what happens.”

  “Well, I never!” Mrs. Grady exclaimed in the silence that followed. “What kind of advice is that?”

  “Sounded good to me,” Mr. Barnhart said. “Wish I’d told my Emma I loved her more often when I had the chance. What do you think, girl?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Erin shrank from Mrs. Grady’s outraged glare.

  “Of course she doesn’t know!” Mrs. Grady exclaimed. “Neither do I. What good does it do to say ‘I love you’?”

  “I think it’s a very nice idea,” Miss Cora Brown announced bravely. She looked at her sister. “I believe it would help me to think more clearly if someone said it to me once in a while.”

  For some reason, Erin thought of Cowper and the strange lost look he wore much of the time. But Cowper had Erin’s parents to tell him they loved him; there was no reason for him to feel lonely. Unless—unless he thought it was just his piano playing they loved!

  “Now it’s the girl’s turn.” Mr. Barnhart broke in on Erin’s disturbing thoughts. “You have a question for the spirits, girl?”

  “N-no!” Suddenly, Erin had seen enough of the seance. She pushed herself back from the table and was starting to get up, when Molly Panca spoke in her robot voice.

  “There is another spirit present. There is another message. I believe it’s for—”

  “—for the pretty little girl there with you.” They all peered into the bedroom, trying to find the source of this new voice. “She is very unhappy.”

  “Unhappy?” Mr. Barnhart repeated. “What’ve you got to be unhappy about, girl? And who’s the spirit that’s talkin’ to ya?”

  Erin sat down hard. “I don’t know,” she gasped. “I don’t know who that is.” And yet the voice had been oddly familiar.

  “You must make good things happen,” it continued. “Do it now. There’s no time to waste.”

  Erin stared hard at Molly Panca’s still face. It had to be Molly talking; she was always telling Margaret Mary to enjoy life instead of complaining. And yet when she looked back at the bedroom door, for a second or two she thought she saw a looming shape, a shadow darker than the darkness around it.

  “Help yourself, Erin,” the voice intoned, becoming fainter. “And help your little brother.…”

  Erin snatched up the flashlight from the floor beside her and jumped to her feet. “I have to go home!” she exclaimed. “Honestly! If my mom and dad come back, they’ll be worried. I have to go right now!”

  She ran to the door, desperate to get away before the voice said more. Whoever it was, Molly or a spirit, it knew too much, understood too much.

  When Erin looked back from the door, Molly Panca’s bright blue eyes were open and watching. Erin lunged out into the hall, the flashlight beam bobbing through the blackness.

  “Don’t run in the halls, young lady.” Mrs. Grady’s harsh cry followed her. “You’ll knock someone down, and we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands.”

  Erin ignored the warning. She felt as if some terrible, all-knowing phantom were about to clutch her arm and pronounce judgment.

  You are an evil person, Erin Lindsay. Only a really bad person would want to get rid of her little brother.

  As she pushed the key into her apartment door, the lights went on. Erin leaned, trembling, against the door and looked up and down the hall.

  Empty.

  She took a long, shuddering breath and let herself into her apartment. Rufus was waiting just inside the door, lying on the floor, his front paws crossed and his tail flicking. He reminded her of—of—and suddenly she knew why the second spirit voice had sounded familiar. It really had been a voice she had heard before.

  The thin, whiny voice of the stone lion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Well, I suppose it was good of her to take you in under the circumstances,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “But I just don’t like the idea of your attending a seance, Erin.”

  “What happened?” Cowper wanted to know. “Does she really talk to dead people?”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Erin’s father answered for her. “It sounds to me as if Molly Panca is a good lady with lots of smarts and a great sense of drama. She wants to help her friends make difficult decisions, and she knows they’ll pay more attention to spirits than to her. She’s an expert ventriloquist, so it can’t be hard for her to come up with a spirit voice or two. And it probably isn’t so hard to make a table hop once you know the trick.”

  “Still, I’m sure you’ll have nightmares tonight,” Mrs. Lindsay insisted.

  “No, I won’t,” Erin said. “I think Daddy’s right about Molly—she was making the table move. The whole seance was hardly scary at all.” (Except for the last part! She hadn’t told them there’d been a message for Erin Lindsay.)

  “Well, I think that’s rotten!” Cowper exclaimed. He looked fiercely disappointed. “I don’t see how you can call her good if she’s fooling people all the time.”

  “She is good,” Erin retorted, just as fiercely. “Molly’s trying to make people happy. What’s bad about that?”

  She didn’t have nightmares, but Erin did have a hard time getting to sleep that night. She wished she hadn’t stayed for the seance. How she felt about Cowbird was no one else’s business. She didn’t have to love him, or help him, if she didn’t want to. But somehow, Molly knew people’s real thoughts. That was frightening. In spite of what Erin had said to Cowper at dinner, she wasn’t sure she liked Molly Panca anymore.

  At least she didn’t have to wonder whether Cowbird was slee
ping out on the porch tonight. The rain beating briskly on his bedroom window would keep him inside. He might not worry about falling five stories, but he hated getting wet.

  The next day seemed endless, with the play looming unpleasantly at the end of it. Halfway through the morning Erin went out to the kitchen where her father had his books and papers spread out on the table.

  “What’s the matter? Nothing to do?” He ran a hand through his hair and scowled at the notes in front of him. “What’s on your mind?”

  Erin shrugged. She could tell him about Cowper and the ledge now. Get it over with. If she wanted to. (“You mean you’ve known this since yesterday afternoon, and you haven’t said anything till now? Why not, Erin? What kind of person are you?”)

  “I never should have taken economics,” Mr. Lindsay muttered. “It’s killing me.” He rubbed his forehead and waited for her to say something. “Problems?”

  Erin shook her head. “I just—wondered what you were doing.”

  He made a face. “What I’m doing is making myself sick. I feel as if I were ten years old and about to flunk a spelling test. I’m sorry, but I guess I’m not in a chatty mood.”

  Erin retreated to the living room and curled up with a book of ghost stories. An hour later, when her mother came home from the university, Erin followed her into her bedroom.

  “There’s something I should probably tell you,” she began cautiously.

  Her mother’s lips tightened. “If it’s about the play tonight, please don’t start again, Erin. You can’t disappoint Miss Panca. She’s been a good friend to you, and I’m sure she’s looking forward to this tremendously. I really don’t understand why you don’t want to go.”

  Erin bit her lip. “It isn’t that.”

  “If you’re worried about getting to the Y and home again, don’t be. Your dad is going to take you and pick you up. So you see, you’re a lucky girl with nothing to complain about. We should all be feeling great—especially now, with Mr. Salzman so pleased with Cowper’s progress.” Her face changed, glowed with pleasure. “He told us last night that Cowper’s problem at the audition doesn’t mean a thing. He thinks there’s no limit to what he’ll accomplish in the future. Isn’t that marvelous?”

  Erin nodded and went back to the living room, her stomach churning.

  When her father and Cowper came home, late in the afternoon, Erin watched again from the window as they played ball in the yard next to the apartment building. Beyond the grassy plot, the bulldozer crawled back and forth across the next lot, pushing and smoothing the rubble there. A siren sounded distantly, came closer. Its wail suited Erin’s mood.

  After dinner she went to her room to change from jeans to clean blue slacks and her favorite bright-red top. Then she lay down on the studio couch and stared at the ceiling, waiting for seven o’clock. Nothing could save her now from a whole evening of Sara Crewe’s perfection.

  At a few minutes before seven, there was a knock on her door. Cowbird peered in. He looked like a little old man, Erin thought, so solemn and pale. His eyes seemed bigger than ever behind the thick glasses.

  “Thanks for not telling,” he said in his slow way. “About the ledge. I thought you were going to.”

  Erin sat up. “I still might,” she said coldly. “You’re crazy to go out there. Really crazy.”

  Cowper blinked. “What do you care?” he asked, and from the way he stood there, waiting, it seemed that he really expected Erin to answer.

  “What I don’t see,” she said finally, “is how you can do a crazy thing like that, and yet not tell my mom and dad how you really feel about playing the piano.”

  “That’s different,” he said and backed out of the room.

  Erin lay down again, wishing she could call back her words. The look on his face had reminded her of the little lost puppy that had shown up in front of their house last winter. She reminded herself that Cowbird was to blame for that unhappy memory, too. If it weren’t for him, her father might have let her keep the pup. Instead, he’d taken it to the Humane Society the very next day. (“We’ll be in Milwaukee all next summer, my queen. Who’s going to take care of him then? And what about the summer after that? Who knows where we’ll be!”)

  Erin looked at her watch and saw that it was seven o’clock. If it weren’t for Cowbird, she’d be in Clinton right now, having pizza with her friends or getting ready to go to the movies. If it weren’t for Cowbird …

  “Erin.” Her father leaned into the room. “Are you ready? You go downstairs and pick up Miss Panca. I’ll meet you both at the front door with the car at seven fifteen.”

  “Okay.” Erin dragged herself up and brushed her hair. Might as well get it over with, she thought. But I’d do anything to get out of this. Out of this evening. Out of this whole summer!

  Erin gave Rufus a farewell pat and said good-bye to her mother in the living room. Outside, the long hallway was stuffy and smelled, as usual, of somebody’s dinner. Erin went slowly down the back stairs, making the walk to Molly’s apartment last as long as possible.

  She knocked and waited. Molly was probably arranging her “family” and thinking up another story about their day. Erin knocked again. The way she felt now, she might tell Molly, right out, that she didn’t believe in talking dolls. Or talking stone lions. Or talking ghosts. It was all silliness! Had anyone ever said things like that to Molly Panca? Probably not. Erin thought of how Molly’s smile would disappear and the sparkle would fade from her blue eyes and Erin knew she wouldn’t say those words, either.

  There was no sound inside 405. Erin turned the doorknob, but the door was locked. That was strange. Molly never locked her door during the day. She said she had nothing worth stealing, and she wanted to be sure her friends could come in whenever they wished. Why didn’t Molly answer? She’d been looking forward to this evening and had probably been dressed and ready to go since lunchtime.

  A door opened down the hall, and a bent figure came out. At first Erin didn’t recognize Mr. Barnhart. She’d never thought of him as small, but in the half-light of the hallway, he looked very frail.

  “Who’s that?” he called. “Who’s knockin’ at Molly’s door?”

  “It’s Erin.” More uneasy than ever, Erin started down the hall toward him. “Do you know where she is?” she asked. “We’re supposed to go to a play together.”

  She was close enough now to see that Mr. Barnhart’s halo of white hair was tousled, and his eyes were red.

  “Well, you can’t go to no play with her now,” he said gruffly. “Can’t do anything else, either. She’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Erin stared at the old man. “She was supposed to wait for me. We were going together.”

  “I said she’s gone,” Mr. Barnhart repeated sharply. His expression changed as he realized Erin didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Don’t you know what gone is, girl? Our Molly’s gone, same as my Emma. It’s terrible!”

  Erin stared at him. “You mean she’d dead? But she can’t be dead. We were here just last night—”

  “Had a heart attack this afternoon,” Mr. Barnhart muttered. “You know how sick she was—never far from goin’, if the truth be told. And now we’ve lost her.” He looked at Erin with pain-filled eyes. “Didn’t you hear the siren? Ambulance come and took her away. Died in the hospital.”

  “I didn’t know she was sick,” Erin said. She still couldn’t believe what Mr. Barnhart was saying. “She never told me.” But even as she said it, scraps of Molly’s talk rattled around in her head—“It’s too late for some of us, but Margaret Mary is young and strong.…”

  “All you had to do was look at her,” Mr. Barnhart said. “A person could tell how sickly she was.”

  “Thanks—thanks for telling me,” Erin said shakily. She backed away from Mr. Barnhart, then turned and fled down the hall to the stairs. His cracked voice followed her.

  “Goin’ to miss her—all of us. She kept us in touch. Kept us on the straight and narrow.”
/>   Erin didn’t stop running till she reached her own apartment. When she threw open the door, both of her parents were standing just inside. They turned to her with frightened faces.

  “Something awful’s happened!” Erin gasped. “Oh, Mom—”

  Before she could go on, Mrs. Lindsay’s hands flew up and she gave a little cry. “Erin, where is he?” she gasped. “Tell us!”

  Erin swallowed the sob that threatened to choke her and looked from one of her parents to the other. What was her mother talking about?

  “Cowper’s disappeared,” her father explained. “He went to his bedroom a while ago, but he’s not there now. We didn’t hear him leave, so he must have sneaked out. He knows he’s not supposed to go out alone in the evenings—”

  Erin darted past them down the hall to her foster brother’s room. The window stood open. When she touched the screen, it flapped loosely.

  “What are you doing?”

  She hadn’t realized her mother and father had followed her. Erin leaned out.

  “Why look out there?” Mr. Lindsay demanded. “The boy can’t fly.”

  Erin felt sick. “I—I think he might have gone out there,” she stammered.

  Before she could say more, there was a harsh, squawking noise, the sound of something breaking, tearing apart. It came from outside.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Lindsay began to cry.

  Erin’s father pushed past her to look out at the ledge. “What was that noise, Erin? Do you know? What’s going on?”

  Erin hugged herself. She felt as if she might shatter into a thousand pieces. “Cowper’s out there,” she sobbed. “On the porch!”

  “What are you talking about?” her father shouted. “There is no porch!”

  The squawking sound came again—rusty bolts pulling loose from ancient brick. In the worst moment she’d ever known, Erin realized he was probably right. There was no porch.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Around the back,” Erin quavered. “Where the ledge ends. There was—is—a porch. You have to walk along the ledge and sort of jump—” She turned quickly from her mother’s stricken look. “Cowper said there’s a door in the hallway, Daddy, behind that chest of drawers. It’s supposed to go to the porch, but it’s closed up.”